The Courant's Own Feeding Frenzy

August 22, 1999|By ELISSA PAPIRNO

A news article about an academic study correlating a decrease in crime with the legalization of abortion touched off a mini-tempest of comment and commentary on The Courant's news and opinion pages earlier this month.

The long article reprinted from the Chicago Tribune on Monday, Aug. 9, was measured and balanced. The same could not be said for much of the feeding frenzy that followed.

Courant columnist Vivian Martin suggested on the op-ed page that Thursday that the views of the professors from the University of Chicago and the law school at Stanford University were noxious and racist. A Northwestern University law professor reached a similar conclusion in her article on the op-ed page as did news columnist Amy Pagnozzi on Page A3 that Friday, both invoking the specter of eugenics.

An editorial the same day criticized the study's authors for not submitting their work to an academic journal before discussing it with the Chicago Tribune reporter. Meanwhile, University of Connecticut sociology professor Noel Cazenave accused the researchers of racism in a letter published that Saturday. Cazenave and Martin both cited the Northwestern professor, whose views were therefore repeated three days in a row.

Editorial cartoonist Bob Englehart then juxtaposed the impact of abortion and the death penalty in his Sunday offering. The same day a staff-reported article recounting reaction to the academic research appeared on Page 1 under the headline ``A Contentious Debate Follows Abortion Study.'' The Courant writers, however, had sought the reaction; the ``debate'' in the article was reportorially generated. The piece contributed few new ideas and contained two factual errors, still uncorrected by the end of last week.

I began to review the coverage after Jeanne D. Miner of Wethersfield, the sister of one of the academic authors, Stanford law professor John J. Donohue III, complained that her brother's research and reputation had been besmirched.

Ordinarily, I would not pursue a complaint from a close relative of the subject of a news story nor a complaint involving the opinion pages.

However, I became intrigued the more I thought about Miner's query. Why hadn't views sympathetic to the research been published? Clearly, columnists and cartoonists have the right to react and express their opinions. But to what extent did the opinion editors and news reporters -- who work for separate sides of the newspaper -- have an obligation to seek other points of views?

And did The Courant as a whole over-cover this story by publishing eight responses to it in one week? (Even the Chicago Tribune in that same time period published only the original article, some letters to the editor, an editorial and one column on the subject.)

``From my standpoint this [the study] is re-confirming the obvious,'' said Editorial Page Editor John J. Zakarian. ``In retrospect, we probably gave it more attention than it deserved.''

The decision to publish the original news article was sound. Assistant Managing Editor Paul Spencer thought the study's conclusions were ``provocative'' and its authors ``substantial people.'' Other academics had commented favorably about its methodology (primarily statistical) although, on the downside, Spencer noted, the study had not been reviewed and published in academic journals.

To their credit, most of those who wrote and commented about the study appear to have read it. However, the professors' hypothesized link between abortion and the crime rate was so potent, and complicated by race, that few wanted to support their admittedly tentative conclusions once they were made public.

Ironically, columnist Ellen Goodman was among a handful of commentators who concluded the professors' thesis ``has the whiff of common sense.'' Their research, she wrote, actually provides ``a counterpoint to eugenics. They looked at what happened when women -- not the state -- were finally allowed to make their own choices'' about having children.

However, her column was not printed, as it usually is, in The Courant because the op-ed editor decided that too much commentary already had been published about the study.

Far too often, members of the national press fall into lockstep on subjects of minimal interest to readers outside their own limited media circles.

Here, commentators at one statewide newspaper gravitated to one article about one academic study that could have been considered intriguing, incomplete or odious. Instantly, they declared it odious and, in their unanimity, stifled the marketplace of ideas the researchers, Chicago Tribune and Courant news editors sought to stimulate.

Like moths drawn to light, the coverage burned itself out in the heat.

Meet Me On Tuesday

I'll be trying something new Tuesday from noon to 1 p.m. at The Courant's Web site. It's called live chat. You say what you think about The Courant's news coverage. I respond. We discuss. The conversation is transcribed and left on line for all to see. Just click on ``Live Chat'' at www.courant.com Tuesday between noon and 1 p.m., and follow the instructions. Let's see you there and talk.